Bets are a paywall has stopped you from reading a paper at some point. Maybe that paper would have influenced your clinical practice? Saved a life? That might be a stretch, but there is significant evidence to suggest papers behind paywalls are viewed less and have less social media attention.¹ Not ideal if reporting practice-changing results.
We preached the open-access movement in the last article but there are always two sides to a story. Large publishers will argue that protecting the integrity of science through peer-review comes at a cost. COVID is an interesting case study on this argument.
The scientific community responded overwhelmingly to the urgency of the pandemic. There was a dramatic increase in open access and pre-print publications. This resulted in more data sharing, greater collaboration and open public review all at previously unthinkable speed.²
However, in certain instances this was detrimental, an obvious example being hydroxychloroquine. The idea hit the headlines based on what turned out to be a methodically flawed pre-print.³ The story was out before the scientific community had the chance to review, critique and retract the pre-print. It looks like a similar scenario is currently playing out with Ivermectin.⁴ Would this have happened if the paper went through a publisher's peer-review? It shouldn’t.
Wherever your opinion falls, paywalls remain part of the publication process for now. Hence, why the Medical library association (MLA) identifies paywalls as one of eight reasons why physicians struggle to keep on top of medical literature.⁵
Crucially though, practicing healthcare professionals and researchers are likely to have access to paid journals through their institution. So why is it still a barrier? The MLA’s research provides a few answers. Multiple logins/passwords, firewall frustrations and lack of access outside of the workplace are all contributing factors.⁵,⁶
This is where Read by QxMD can help. Once your institution signs up to QxMD we work closely with your librarian to incorporate all your journal subscriptions. The result, one password to access your QxMD account from which you can view or download full-text publications from work or home and share them freely with your colleagues. Made possible thanks to collaborations with single sign-on systems like EZproxy, Shibboleth and our unique technology partnership with OpenAthens.
All this should also mean you have more time, arguably the biggest barrier. We will save that discussion for the next article.
References:
- https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-015-1547-0
- https://read.qxmd.com/read/33798194/
- https://read.qxmd.com/read/32450107/
- https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/93658
- https://read.qxmd.com/read/33424474/
- https://read.qxmd.com/read/27872121/
